Live From Festivus

December 12 episode
Welcome to episode 37 of the Brainstorm podcast. Yes our episode numbers have been more than a little buggered up lately. After the break I forgot what episode we were on and it threw them off. Today is December 12, 2015 I’m your host Cory and with me tonight are Rene, Lana, and Leo with the always amazing Dave doing our sound here Live on location at the Festivus for the Rest of Us event for the Regina Centre for Inquiry

There are three references at the end of the getholistichealth article. The first one is to an article from the Orange County register titled Eco-friendly bulbs loaded with lead, arsenic. The article talks about LED bulbs but the article from get holistic health talks about cfl bulbs so there’s no supporting information in the orange county register article. The second reference is an article from natural news that talks about fluorescent bulbs containing mercury published in 2011 titled CF light bulbs a serious health hazard to women and children due to mercury content. This article talks specifically about the mercury in the bulbs when they break but the first story from get holistic health makes a bunch of claims about other symptoms and issues resulting from CF bulbs. So where is the article getting it’s information? Using a reference to Peter Braun and a study showing CF bulbs contain carcinogens. A study which proved to be quite hard to find. All my searches led me to an article in the London Telegraph but that article didn’t have a link to the study so I looked for more info on Peter Braun and the Berlin Alab Laboratory. I couldn’t find anything on either of them.
All in all, this at the very least is not a credible article.

And there are a variety of skeptic blogs, websites and podcasts who are great for debunking the latest fad in misinformation.

Atheism For Dummies part 5

We covered what atheism was and why there was an atheist movement. We covered a few terms that are associated with atheists and atheism. We covered what apologetics was, in a broad sense and we asked what other things atheism says about us as people.
Now I want to get into some of the history of atheism before moving onto some different religions and their historical figures and some counter apologetics.
I know this isn’t the fun part of the show but I think that it’s important for people who don’t know this stuff to hear some of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_atheism

The wiki page, the history of atheism, touches briefly on the eastern religions of Buddhism, Jainism, some Hinduism and Taoism which had some aspect of non deity based philosophy in the 6th century BCE. They were still quite tied to the idea of a soul and eternal life but often didn’t really have gods in there anywhere.

Many Greek philosophers were famous critics of religious beliefXenophanes (sixth century BCE) famously said that if cows and horses had hands, "then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cows like cows".[11] Another philosopher, Anaxagoras (fifth century BCE), claimed that the Sunwas "a fiery mass, larger than the Peloponnese"; a charge of impiety was brought against him, and he was forced to flee Athens

Epicurus espoused a materialistic philosophy where the universe was governed by the laws of chance without the need for divine intervention. Although he stated that deities existed, he believed that they were uninterested in human existence. The aim of the Epicureans was to attain peace of mind by exposing fear of divine wrath as irrational.

The middle ages in Islamic areas had their own atheists and rationalists
outspoken rationalists and atheists existed, one notable figure being the ninth-century scholar Ibn al-Rawandi, who criticized the notion of religious prophecy, including that of Muhammad, and maintained that religious dogmas were not acceptable to reason and must be rejected.[28] Other critics of religion in the Islamic world include the physician and philosopher Abu Bakr al-Razi (865–925), the poet Al-Maʿarri(973–1057), and the scholar Abu Isa al-Warraq (fl. 7th century). Al-Maʿarri, for example, wrote and taught that religion itself was a "fable invented by the ancients"[29] and that humans were "of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains

There’s lots of other atheist history that we can look at or we can move onto some of the apologetic arguments if that’s what listeners want. Let us know at mail@brainstormblog.net what you want to hear or join us in the chat.

Music break three songs- Music fans from the 90’s got some terrible news last week. Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver fame died the evening of December 3rd. That’s not the kind of news we usually cover but for many of us in our thirties this is a major event and Weiland was a major influence during our formative years. In honor of this loss we’ll play some STP for you during our break. Here’s Down from the album No. 4, and Naked Sunday and Wicked Garden from the album Core

Main topic
For our main segment we talked to a couple of the event guests
Guest questions

How long have you been involved with the CFI group?
What belief system or lack of belief system do you identify with?
How long have you believed that or not believed that?
Do you celebrate Christmas or do some other tradition?

That was all we had time for because the event venue was closing for the night and we had to get out of there. Sorry for the lack of a decent outro. Check us out on January 8th for our next live episode, available at mixlr.com/the-brainstorm-podcast and chat live with us. All you have to do is make a mixlr account and follow The Brainstorm Podcast.

If you can’t afford to help us out on patreon go to Itunes or stitcher and give us a rating and a review. You can go and buy brainstorm gear from cafepress.ca/brainstormpodcastgear or just go to our website and click on the cafepress link. And, remember to send us those pics with you wearing your brainstorm gear and we’ll throw them up on the listener page.

We want to know what you love and hate about the show so if you’ve got any comments, criticisms, praise, accolades or corrections mail us at mail@brainstormblog.net or click the contact tab. We will respond to your email.

Intro music created just for us by David Roman of Roman Empire Studios with voice over and effects by Alixcm. Outro music by Jason Comeau, you can find his stuff at aloststateofmind.com . All music played is either with permission or under the SOCAN licence to play.

For comments, criticism, thoughts or questions contact us at mail@brainstormblog.net or fill out our handy contact form. If you have a podcast or website and want a shoutout or have a promo to play let us know.